Entry 5/17

Our engineers have finished strong and made some nice polishing touches that make our app look like a gem. There are some features that the engineers still want to add, but all the functionality that we asked for have been built. The navigation and buttons look very slick and the app performs well and is easy to use.

During our meeting we were able to decided who is going to present what aspects of the app. We were able to go over what we are going to cover and ask the engineers any questions we had.

I am excited to see all the progress that we have made. The app has evolved much overtime and has turned into something that is more amazing then I could have imagined. Our engineers have done some amazing work and they have blown me away by what they can do. Our group is looking forward to presenting our app tomorrow and showing off all the work our engineers have done.

5/10

This week we discussed the final touches we wanted our engineers to make. Since most of the design decisions were made a while back we spent most of our time going over a few key features that we and our engineers thought could benefit from tweaking.

Since we all had things happen later on campus we spent most of our meeting socializing. This was a nice break from all the tech talk. Also, it was fun to learn more about the people behind the code.

The programmers also showed us some of the code that they have written and explained what it meant. The code looks intimidating but our engineers did a good job of explaining what all the different letters and symbols mean.

One aspect of our app that impresses me the most is the map app. I really like visually being able to see where trails app. To me this is a key feature of the application and is also fun. I am excited that soon we will be able to demonstrate our app to the rest of the company.

Week of May 5

The finish line is closing in and iHike still has work to do. This week our programmers did not have anything significant to show us, so we are waiting till Monday to see what progress they have made. In class on Tuesday we talked with our head programmer. We showed him the home-screen art that I created. He told us that right now they are using filler artwork but that replacing that with what we create would be easy.

Talking about artwork we still have not finished a design for our loading screen. Andrew had an innovative idea about animating a line across the screen that would form Mt. Tam. This idea resonated with me as someone who spent over a decade in Marin County. Although I have some experience using flash I am more comfortable with Keynote and in the new version there is an option for creating simple animation. So I am going to experiment with that and see if I can create something that our programmers could then use.

Although our app has grown from a simple idea to a well executed design there will still be more steps if we want to make this an app that could be approved by Apple. Andrew mentioned copy right issues with the photos for the home-screen. Since some of the images are from Flickr getting permission for those photos would probably be easy. Other photos, such as the Gold Gate bridge may be more difficult, although in this instance I could either use photos I already have, take new photos, or better yet talk with a photographer I know from the Star newspaper at Sonoma State.

Overall I feel that our group has put a strong effort together and I am happy with the progress we have made so far. I appreciate that most of the time our entire group shows up to the meetings and I am really pleased with all the work Lindsey has put in. She has been great in facilitating communication between iHike and the programmers by creating a Facebook discussion that everyone has access to. We used this tool to gather all of our trail info for our programmers and continue to use this as our communication platform, since everyone can see all the messages in the thread.